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The French President revives His Country’s Partnership with Africa and China

After years of stagnation, the cooperation between the Chinese and the French governments in the African continent could finally materialize on issues of climate change, security, and political stability. During his state visit to Beijing this week, the French president Emanuel macron made various suggestions on the partnership of their two governments to improve the livelihoods of Africans by offering them with incentives and support to fight global terrorism and alleviate the challenges of a warming planet.

Although the China-France partnership in the African continent was not top of his agenda during his state visit to China, President Macron made mention of the cooperation virtually in passing on a speech he delivered alongside the Chine president Xi Jing ping on January 9. However, Macron announced that the Agency for Development in France (AFD) and the China Development bank would collectively offer support to projects that are on the frontline to combat climate change. This partnership could reignite the China-France Cooperation in the African continent that has long been at a standstill.

President macron noted that his government had decided to deepen their focus on the African Continent where the Chinese had already established themselves by offering their engineering and financial services to most of the African countries. Macron added that the goal of the partnership between Paris and Beijing was to fund projects that have a genuine utility to the future of the continent and that meets the aspirations of the African citizenry. He added that the partnership had a spirit of the framework to invest in projects that combat climate change and the dangers that accrue from a warming planet was evident when the China Development Bank signed a pact with French AFD.

The partnership between Beijing and Paris on the African continent had taken a new shape with the signing of the agreement between the two financial corporations. In July 2015, the partnership between China and France aimed at third-party markets was signed. The pact was aimed at Africa and Asia and was meant to encourage Chinese and French companies to have incentives that are beyond the traditional co-financing, co-production, and sub-contracting of the different schemes that they were involved in and start synergizing. The problem with the 2015 agreement is that no projects that were collaborated by companies from both countries yielded any results. The summit for the China-French relationship that was supposed to take place in Dakar Senegal did not take place for two consecutive years.